


in dreams begin responsibilities

by lorax



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Fantasizing, M/M, Masturbation, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:28:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorax/pseuds/lorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little pleasures are sometimes lost along the way.  Laurent remembers to take time for himself and grows closer to thoughts of who he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in dreams begin responsibilities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ouroboros](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouroboros/gifts).



> Title from U2's _Acrobat_ , based on the book of the same title. Sections are slotted into sections of the canon, beginning before the start of the first book and finishing at the end of current canon.

# in dreams begin responsibilities

"You should likely be almost anywhere else," Laurent said without looking over. He'd rather have been in his own suite, with his guards on the door and the chance of interruption and interference minimal. But there was weakness in isolation, too. He had to keep a careful balance of visibility but aloofness -- be available to the few, not to no one at all. And this at least was company he didn't mind, however dangerous.

Nicaise wore green so soft it slid like water over his skin whenever he moved. His hair was growing out just enough to be against the current fashion. It only made him stand out more and framed his face enough to highlight the stark beauty there. "I can go where I like," he said, haughty and full of disdain for Laurent, who must have less freedom if such things concerned him. His voice was a melody, unbroken yet -- the clear flute of a boy who hadn't yet found any hint of the man he would become.

It was a good show, but Laurent had seen him enter. He came into the sitting room through the east entrance, where the fewest eyes would see him. He sat where there was no view from the balcony or doorways, and Nicaise sat close enough that his voice could carry, even in intimate or soft conversation, but the chaise he'd chosen was far enough that if he chose, he could say he had no interest in Laurent's company. (Which he would, if pressed.) No one would believe him, but it would be a good lie. Nicaise was clever and he was careful, he was just too young to see all the angles yet that would keep him safe.

Laurent wouldn't say -- he couldn't -- but he thought of Nicaise often. He thought sometimes of touching him. Not as Nicaise was touched by anyone else, but as Auguste had once touched Laurent. Auguste had been easy with Laurent. His touches had held warmth in the arms he threw around Laurent's shoulders, the hand that squeezed his shoulder when swordplay lessons had gone well, the embrace that he'd given when Laurent was very small and hadn't realized that he shouldn't need comfort from his brave and bold older brother. Nicaise was an only child, his parents far from him and unmoved to care for anything but power. He had no one to offer such things. They would be rejected if offered, taken wrongly and turned into what he'd never mean them to be, at best. At worst they would be accepted and taken as a sign of weakness Laurent could not show.

Nicaise had never had a brother. He had no way of knowing what he was missing; perhaps it was better that way. Laurent still missed what was long gone, be it Auguste's true and clean affection that the whole of Vere liked to sully into something unclean that it had never been, or the ugly lie of love he'd been foolish enough to believe in. Laurent had once been too young to see the true angles too.

Still. Nicaise had sought him out today, and he was artful and careful and full of disdain. But there was a fading ring of bruise purple on his arm, beneath the voluminous sleeve Laurent was sure Nicaise had let Laurent see beneath when he'd shifted. He'd moved graceful and slight as a deer, but there had been a slowness to it. And he didn't meet Laurent's eyes, save when he made himself, as if it were a challenge. Nicaise never backed down from a challenge. It was a weakness in itself, but Laurent wouldn't tell him that, either. There might come a time he could use it.

He hid it beneath his haughty disregard and the beauty of his face and the biting way he feigned disinterest, but Nicaise had come here because he hadn't wanted to be alone. Laurent could read the signs. He almost wanted to teach the boy how not to give such signs away, but that too would be refused if offered, and was too much advantage to give away to someone ostensibly aligned with an enemy. "I'm sure that's true," Laurent said, noncommittal and soft, letting his mouth quirk into something that wasn't a smile, but might be akin to it.

Nicaise's jewel-clear eyes narrowed. "I can. Just because you have to account for where you are at all times doesn't mean I do. I have the freedom to do as I like, see whoever I like."

"You could even have pets of your own, if it suited you. Take lovers. Have friends and fill your days as you liked," Laurent agreed, as if it weren't the most blatant of lies.

Nicaise's falter was brief, easy to miss, but it was still there. He was just so young, still. "I could," he agreed, voice just a pitch higher, words just a little too vehement.

Nothing of Nicaise's life was his own. Laurent must account for his moments, hide his movements, cloud his every thought to hide its origins and intents But still, he had the freedom of choice. Nicaise spent his time waiting on Laurent's uncle. Any little infraction, any moment Nicaise took for himself might mean a moment the Regent wanted him that Nicaise wasn't there for, and then he would lose his hold. Beautiful boys -- even ones as impossibly lovely as Nicaise -- were always replaceable.

Nicaise, sharp as a diamond and just as expensive, pretended to believe himself without equal, and that almost, _almost_ made it true. If he'd just found some other man to pamper him it might well have been. But the choice had never been his either, and he made do. Nicaise knew, beneath his affectations and shell of false assurance. He knew that what he had was fleeting, and that it could turn on him if he wasn't careful. So he was careful and he was smart but he was _here_. He was still too much a boy to ever be careful enough. They all were. "It's best to give your time to those who most appreciate it, anyway," Laurent said, giving him his dignity. "If your greatest admirer is busy, you might as well be here, and not waste it on lesser versions."

Nicaise's smile glittered, but his eyes looked at the wall beside Laurent instead of into Laurent's own eyes. "Like you?" he said, snide and sweet at once. "Is that why you bother with so few," he added, like it had never been an insult at all. Laurent hid a smile, looked down at the book he was pretending to read. "Is this what you do all day? No wonder you seem so colorless."

"I find ways to entertain myself." Laurent looked up again. "I needn't wait for the pleasure of others to find my own."

Nicaise sniffed. "I don't think you could find it if you tried. I don't think it even _works_. Everyone knows you're limp all the way through."

That hadn't been what Laurent meant, and for a brief shadow of an instant, he allowed himself to be surprised that it had been taken that way. But he hid it, and he thought it through. He remembered what it was like to be Nicaise. To wait on someone else for every pleasure and pain and to know your body only through someone else's hands. "Perhaps there's more merit in my own touch than anyone else's," Laurent said after a beat too long. The pause had caught Nicaise's interest the way blood would have called a shark. He sensed weakness too well. If he survived the waters until he grew into himself, he would do very, very well. "Maybe it's merit you can learn, instead of waiting on it elsewhere."

Nicaise watched, shifted languidly. "Maybe I should," he said. His thick lashes fluttered half closed, peeking up at Laurent, licking his lips. "Maybe you could touch me. To guide my hand?" he purred.

He was a child, and Laurent had no more inclination to touch him with sexual intent than he had to strip himself naked and run through his uncle's Council meeting. But refusal was an insult, and they were always dangerous to give without reason. Nicaise teetered on a line between friend and enemy, asset and concern. Laurent couldn't tip him the wrong way. So he smiled. "If only prior claims didn't prevent," he said, bland enough to be a joke, smile enough to maybe not be.

It was appeasement enough. Nicaise subsided, and fell silent. When he spoke again, his voice was less studied and deliberate. "What purpose is there, with no one watching?"

That struck home too, but Laurent showed no sign. "To please yourself, and not anyone else." Nicaise had no idea how, and no notion of why he should. He'd learned to enjoy luxury because that was what he was offered, to crave touch because it meant it kept him in that luxury, and because with luxury was the safety of being favored and adored -- whatever price that carried. He knew nothing else.

He was so young. And he was so familiar.

"If I asked to watch you, would you let me?" Nicaise asked, and there was no malice in the question that Laurent could find.

That didn't mean there was none hidden, but Laurent had learned kindness. He wasn't Nicaise. Once someone had loved him with no expectation. It changed you. "No," Laurent said, soft enough that no one could have heard the refusal.

Nicaise bit his lip and looked down. "What do you think of?" he asked.

For a moment old images ran through Laurent's mind. Fantasies of a broken boy who had the only man he'd known leave him because he grew too close to being a man himself. He could think of nothing else. Had it really been so long since he even thought of such things for himself? His mind was wrapped in intrigue and paranoia and plans. Simple things were lost. Maybe they shouldn't have been.

"Someone I've never met," Laurent said finally, truthfully, because he remembered faceless, nameless hands in his mind's eye sometimes. Strong arms that held him and wanted him and wanted nothing else from him.

Nicaise nodded, and Laurent rose. For a second, he thought of Auguste, and his hand hovered, almost dropping to clasp a thin, boyish shoulder that was draped in silk. Nicaise's eyes met his, and Laurent smiled. But his hand stayed. He left the boy to the quiet of the room and sought his own rooms.

In the silence of his bed, with trusted men outside and his uncle as far as the gilded walls of his cage could allow, Laurent thought of someone he'd never met, and tried to make his hand slide down to touch himself. But he couldn't. Instead he added it to the list of things he resolved to do for himself, tidy and orderly as everything else he resolved to do, and then busied himself reading over the notes slipped to him from a servant in his uncle's employ, who warned of a slave shipment from Akielos that would soon arrive.  
***

The heat and _want_ pumping through his veins hurt as much as any wound Laurent had ever had because he could not afford to indulge it. The damnable drug turned his veins to fire and made every touch, even the whisper of fabric against his skin, into an act of sex that demanded more. The slave was gone, the bodies cleared, and Laurent had plans to make and follow. Damen would be caught and Laurent was no coward to leave a debt of life standing. He'd have to stand, sacrifice advantages he'd spent months building to save the life of one who would happily have seen Laurent dropped headfirst from a window.

And yet he'd saved when he could have let Laurent die and make his escape anyway. It wasn't prudence -- he would be blamed for the attempt nonetheless, it was something else. Something in the slave that defied any pattern Laurent understood.

It was maddening and sometimes it pricked at the heart-sick parts of himself Laurent couldn't afford to have, but there were moments when the slave seemed more someone Auguste would have admired than anyone else Laurent had known since his brother fell to Damianos' sword. It made it difficult to see all the shades of what he might be capable of, and look at him and see the brute he still was, however many nuances he had alongside the brutality of his birth. And it pricked at his conscience when Laurent saw the marks on his the slave's back and thought of them. He had been justified, but he had not been controlled. There was fault in that.

And now, the slave's wide shoulders, the set of his jaw the heat of his hand on Laurent's wrist -- it all played havoc with Laurent's drug-hazed senses. His sluggish mind wanted to whirl around the encounter, to think of scarred skin against his own. It was the drugs, not sense, not _truth_ speaking, but there was a voice in Laurent's mind that wondered if it would be so bad to take Damen to bed. They believed he had Laurent nightly as it was -- what harm in letting him?

He forced his mind away, made his thoughts drift to other faces, other men. Laurent had no other touchstones to use in truth, save the one he never wanted to think of at moments when his body screamed for touch. Since he'd spoken with Nicaise of pleasure, Laurent had trained himself into touching with faceless images in his mind. But now he couldn't call them up. He made himself picture Jord, sure and rough and loyal down to the last bits of himself, but it did nothing. Torveld, who held no true power but would play the part if Laurent asked, because he would do anything Laurent asked of him. 

They did nothing to appease him. His mind's eye even called up Nicaise, perfect and bright and so, so beautiful. Laurent pictured him older, the age Laurent was now. He imagined him too old for his Uncle and lost and alone and still sharp and dangerous as broken glass. Laurent imagined going to his knees, proving that for Nicaise, pleasure would never need to depend on someone who only wanted what was too young to know how fickle affection would be.

But Laurent's mind circled back, again and again, to wide shoulders and Damen. His men would find the slave, bring him back, and this attraction would be nothing without the pulsebeat of a drug driving it. It would have no bearing, no meaning. Laurent could be sure of it. But for now, to make himself capable of facing the Council, Laurent gave in. He let it be that thought of Damen's tight jaw and fierce eyes just before he left be what did him in as he hurriedly opened his clothes and took himself in hand. It was fast and graceless, teeth gritted and hand sliding rough and angry over himself until he spilled. The drug kept him hard, kept him from relaxing -- but it was enough that he could breathe, that he could think and hide it.

Laurent cleaned up the evidence and redressed enough to hide the proof of arousal, then called for a servant to dress. Damen wouldn't make it out of the city, and Laurent would have to concede more than he wished to save him. But whatever the world thought of him, Laurent was Auguste's brother. He wouldn't let a debt of life go unanswered and uncared for.  
***

The clash of swords had died down into the grumbling of men and the creak of leather as Laurent's army cleaned their weapons and bedded down for meager sleep. It had been another of the midnight training runs that they were using to turn a ragged horde of a scraped-together army into as true a fighting force as such men could be, and they were all bone-tired and sore, but there was no wild sense of growing discontent, the way there would have been even a few weeks ago. Laurent had been out with them, watching through the night mist and feeling the bitter cold, he would have seen it.

They were too few, but it was more than he had calculated, these men. Laurent knew where to lay the blame and commendation for that. Damen was a man of action, a soldier. Laurent had once miscalculated by believing him just a brute of an Akielos, but it had been Laurent's own blind hatred at work, not true sight. If he'd been looking as he should, Laurent would have seen more than what was on the surface. Beneath the muscle and scars and the power was a man who could turn hired swords and cut throats into a loyal army. Laurent played his part -- there was no training under the sun that could make men follow if they had no one at their head to lead, and he had played the figurehead for all of his life, it was time he showed what he truly was, too -- but it would have done him no good without Damen to stand at his side and say what no one else would have.

And yet it was a loss, too, because there was strength in weakness. A fighting force made Laurent more of a target -- a more immediate threat. And there were other concerns. Somewhere there was a traitorous bird, singing their secrets. Laurent believed he knew where it was, but he made no assumptions. He worked only from fact, and that he did not have yet. There was more to the game then strength, and those were the parts that Damen had yet to understand. For the good of them all, it was better that he not. Understanding would change him, and not for the better. If Damen's mind turned in the same circles and paths as everyone else Laurent knew, he would be of no use. As it was, he was an asset beyond what Laurent could have measured.

That did not make him less dangerous. Laurent kept him close because of that. But tonight, in the quiet of a tent Damen had not yet returned to, he could admit that if he'd let there be, he might have had other reasons, ones he'd denied since Damen last tried to escape and the drugs had forced Laurent to admit what he otherwise never would have.

Damen with a sword and orders on his tongue was a force of nature, too fierce to be beautiful, and too stirring to be brutal. He was a fascination, one Laurent sometimes had to force himself not to watch.

It was not so cold out, not truly. But the wind blew and turned it bitter and Laurent had felt chilled to his bones. He stood in front of the fire and as it chipped away at the chill. It brought with it lassitude, and his mind rolled back over Damen, stripping out of his armor beside a makeshift training field. Damen, jaw square as he fought back whatever blunt truth he wanted to bark at Laurent over something Laurent had not shown him the whole picture of.

He thought of Damen, and he warmed. For a moment Laurent fought it back, but then he remembered Nicaise and what they'd spoken of, and instead he turned away, sat on the edge of his bed where he could not be seen from the entrance to the tent. He'd long again had easy, hidden panels stitched into his clothes so that he could get himself in and out, should the need ever arise. He'd never used them, just known they were there, as he knew of so many of his secrets and fallbacks. Now he opened his clothes, slipped a hand inside and let his mind picture the line of Damen's back. As his hand eased over his own length, he imagined the scars there erasing, wiping away like history could be undone with a lustful thought.

He imagined meeting in some other way, in another place, where they needn't hate and could have touched without the lines and judgment that came with it. 

He thought of nothing but those images, the look of it. Laurent couldn't let himself think of touch, of closeness, not quiet. But he'd almost let himself imagine lips against his own as his hand faster on his cock. His completion was mere moments away when he heard the whisper of the tent flap opening. He forced his mind blank and pulled his clothes back into place, smooth and quick.

Damen sounded tired, but wry. "We might almost have one man capable of surviving at this rate," he said.

Laurent thought that he imagined the eyes sliding over his back, the assessment in Damen's eyes when he turned to meet them. But he might not have. It was a strangeness in Damen that he was as open as any book Laurent had ever read, and yet somehow he was more mystery than anyone Laurent had ever known. As if he just weren't quite written in a language Laurent knew how to decipher. He waved toward the tray of food left near where Damen slept. "Eat. I've no use for you tonight," he said. His voice sounded even. He had long practice in making himself deny what he wanted. This was just one more time. It was all he'd let it be.

Damen watched him for a long moment before he complied. Laurent lay awake long afterward. He slept little as it was, but this was different. It wasn't worry in his head, it was want to finish what he'd begun. He let himself listen to the evenness of Damen's breathing until it lulled him into a fitful doze. There would be no time for it come morning, and it could be forgotten, he told himself as he drifted off.  
***

Laurent grunted as the whore's deft hands pulled tight the laces of his borrowed dress. The blonde who had lent it was in only a nightshift, her hair down and her limbs arranged enticingly where she sprawled across a lounge. Laurent looked at her and felt unstirred, though he could see where her beauty lie, and why someone else -- why Damen -- wouldn't have been so unmoved in his place. "He looks a good one, your Master," the woman lacing him up said. Her hair shone in the firelight and she smelled clean and fresh. Laurent knew none of their names and couldn't ask. None of them knew the truth save their Maitresse, and he would leave it that way. Too many questions meant too many lies, better to leave it and let them go unasked. "Like he'd know his way about in a bedroom?" she pursued, fishing.

Did he? Damen know his way around a woman, Laurent supposed. He'd never let himself wonder if Damen would know men so well. If he'd even want to, or if Laurent would want him to, or if he'd want it to be strange and one-off enough that it held no appeal to get him there. He didn't believe that was true, but his life likely would be simpler if he could convince himself it was.

The blonde shifted, giving up on him and settling into a more comfortable position instead and just eying him. "So tell us about him? Come on, if we're supposed to keep you here and can't make coin with clients tonight, at least give us something to talk about, lovely."

Laurent thought of the window pulled from its mooring, of the way Damen had leapt from roofs, of the easy strength of his body. "He's ... forceful. But careful, even with someone hired to please for a night. His absurd honor kicks in at unexpected moments." He thought of the lithe and soft slave Damen had worked so hard to save. "He believed he liked those who bowed and scraped and gave all he wanted."

The brunette finished with his laces and moved to sit with the other women, patting her lap for him to come sit. "Teaching him otherwise, are you pretty?"

It was absurd, and Laurent couldn't help a little thrill. Here, he was nothing but a paid boy amongst women of the same breed, talking of a man they wished had chosen them for a night. There was ... freedom in the role. Even if they didn't stir him, there was something alluring in the easy offers of touch and sensuality they gave without purpose save boredom and appreciation, too. Laurent crossed, draped across soft laps while a woman's fingers moved to stroke through his hair. The third sat cross legged in front of him and began to paint his face in sure, careful strokes to make him look the part of a woman.

He didn't answer, but Laurent thought that he could show Damen otherwise, if he so wanted. He wasn't sure that he would want to. Laurent imagined that moment, pinned behind a window, death a noise away and shaking with laughter, intimate and close. He'd trusted Damen. Damen had helped him. He trusted even now that Damen would return; it was novel. If he were himself, it would be an annoyance and perhaps even a fear. Laurent couldn't afford loyalty.

But tonight he wasn't a Prince. He was something else entirely. "I will when I see him again, I expect," he said, the lie coming easily, turning into something else -- a fantasy of what might have been, in another life. 

"You should wear that. Turn him upside down and tease him until he begs you, then give whatever he wants. The big ones, they always like that better than they let on, and they always beg," The blonde said with a smile, winking at him.

Laurent couldn't picture it, Damen wanting to beg. He couldn't picture himself wanting that from Damen, either. But then, he knew so little of what he would want. He had never let himself truly dwell on it. Perhaps he hadn't grown so far from the kind of boy Nicaise still was after all. "He has given all I asked of him and more with very little reason. I think I'd rather give him what he wants, this time," Laurent said.

He was uneasy with the truth of it, but cast it aside. He wasn't Laurent. It didn't matter what was said to these women.

"Ah, pretty, never give them all they want. They won't pay for more, no matter how tight your ass," the brunette said, bending to kiss his hair. Laurent shut his eyes, wondering what this would feel like if he were moved by women. He wondered what it would be like for Damen. He turned his head and her sculpted brows lifted, looking at him, and then she smiled, bending and kissing him, slow and deep.

He let her. Laurent even liked it. He could count the times he'd been kissed the way he could count his own birthdays -- they were as few. But in his mind, he became the woman, pretty and soft and kissing, and it was Damen's mouth against his. His ardor stirred beneath the volume of the skirt. He ignored it as the kiss ended, and the women laughed, petting him like a prize hound, three sets of hands twining and untwining as they moved. "Look at you -- not a one who won't think you're just another of us," the blonde said, satisfied. Just as quickly, she changed topics. "So how big is he when you've got him going, lovely? A nice mouthful, isn't he?"

Laurent's breath caught a little, remembering the showers, a dozen glimpses since when he'd seen Damen change in and out of his clothing. "Big enough to fill you as well as you want," he said, hearing the quaver in his voice. He should have hated it, but tonight he didn't have to. It was interesting.

"Lucky you, pretty," the brunette said. She kissed his hair again, and then nudged him gently up to sit, getting up to bustle through fixing them tea and talking of a client of hers who wasn't bigger than the smallest of her fingers. Laurent had long ago mastered the art of following conversation while his mind wandered, and he listened while behind his eyes he thought of Damen.

Laurent hoped he was safe.

Tonight, he could wish that he could see him, and thank him as Laurent had wanted to for weeks. He was just a boy who missed a man. It needn't be anything more, for this moment. It was the kind of lie Laurent could use to make his own inclinations bearable.  
***

_Laurent, I am your slave,_ Damen had said. So simply, as if every ounce of pride he had shouldn't have rebelled. Laurent would never understand him. He didn't want to try. He wanted to trust that Damen was not him, and that he would forever be honest. Even if it couldn't be true, Laurent _wanted to believe_ that there was a world where it might be. His body ached still from their night as he sat astride his horse, riding for Fortaine, leaving Damen behind to hold what they had already won together.

Never had it been more difficult to think of strategy than it was now, when Laurent only wanted to think of how he _felt_. Every stray image, every shift of his seat brought memory with it and Laurent ached to be touched and to touch and to _feel_ again as he'd felt with Damen.

This was why it had never been wise to be anything but aloof, why it had been safer to remember only being used and believe that was how it always would be. Because he needed to think of war, and all he wanted to think of was wanting. Laurent was no callow boy, no foolish romantic. He would put it from his mind. He would do what needed doing. But as they rode out, Damen behind him, Laurent could _feel_ him watching, even if he wasn't, as if his eyes were branded now onto every inch of Laurent's skin. And Laurent liked it too well.

In a mile, they would be too far from any eyes for even an illusion of it to linger in Laurent's mind. But for now, with the feel of watching and the memory of a night better than any in Laurent's memory, even with grief still beating a drum into his chest for Nicaise and his own mistakes, Laurent could admit to himself. In this one thing, for that one night, he was as much Damen's slave as Damen had been his.

Tomorrow he would deny it to himself and remember his own distance. But for this last lone mile at least, Laurent was Damen's.  
~~~


End file.
